Far Cry 2: AMD Hotfix delivers up to 98% better performance

Earlier today we reported about the Hotfix driver that is supposed to improve the performance of Radeon graphics cards in Far Cry 2. We checked the Catalyst update: It has its pros and cons.

IntroductionAccording to AMD the Hotfix increases the performance of single and multi GPU systems and is available for Windows XP (32 and 64 Bit) as well as Windows Vista (32 and 64 Bit). In addition to all Radeon HD graphics cards, most of the X1000 series models are supported.

[Source: view picture gallery]

Hotfix detailsThe internal serial number of the Hotfix is 8.541-081009a. It seems to be a modified Catalyst 8.10 (8.541-080923a). With a HD 4870 the driver is causing problems in Far Cry 2 running on Windows Vista x64 - aberrations and lags prevent the record of useful results. We experienced the same problems with another model of the graphics card. The Radeon HD 4870 X2 on the other hand was running smooth.

Hotfix driver for Far Cry 2 [Source: view picture gallery]

Test setupFor our tests we used the "Ranch Small” scene that runs about one minute and offers multiple explosions, fire effects and a lot of A.I. usage. Our test system is based on an Nforce 790i SLI board with 4 GiByte DDR3 memory and an Intel Q9650. The operating system is Windows Vista x64.

Conclusion: Far Cry 2 HotfixThe Hotfix driver for Far Cry 2 doesn't just add Crossfire support in DX9 mode for the HD 4870 X2, but also increases the DX10 performance of the card. We are still checking the problems with the HD 4870. All benchmark results can be found on the next page. The CPU results can be found in our Far Cry 2 benchmark review.

It looks like we will run a full update of the Far Cry 2 performance review soon, since Nvidia is rumored to release a Far Cry 2 driver, too. So possibly we will see some better Geforce results in the next edition of our Far Cry 2 benchmarks.